Dim lonely corridors
by Acereack
Summary: A space station abandoned, a boy trapped for his entire life. Dim lights lining the corridors that lead to only more loneliness. A glimpse of freedom taken at last, but can you escape your own mind?


Dim Lonely Corridors.

It was hard to tell time, the lights never turned off. They dimmed, but darkness was a rare thing. In fact, I can't remember the last time I saw darkness. Not being able to see my surroundings frankly terrified me, that was the purpose of project Hyperion, I guess.

My room was blank, with only a few possessions nearby, the hammock that I slept in, my bag that I brought everywhere, and my book. Everyone had been issued a book when they boarded the Hyperion, but several hundred years on, it was hard to find one nowadays. Or maybe they did, but from what I remember they were rare. It was nothing special, just descriptions of the ship, and the hundreds of thousands of different areas. But there was one section that interested me the most, the final 5 pages. It was filled of blurry black and white pictures of what life was like before Hyperion.

The photos were so blurry, that I could hardly make out what some of them were, but it wasn't the pictures of a star in the sky, or of a strange mound of earth kilometres high, that I found intriguing. It was the people, they were smiling. I hadn't seen anyone smile in a long time, but then, I hadn't seen anyone in a long time.

I clambered out of the hammock, and practically rolled over to my bag. My room was small, well I could hardly call it a room, it was a small cabinet off of an incredibly long corridor. The tubes and wires snaked along the corridor, coming into my room as well, but it was rare to find one that actually did something. I had tried cutting them to try and get access to power, but nothing had happened. The only thing I could get to work was the lights, but I hadn't even done that, that was just how it was down here.

I got my clothes out of my bag, and put them on, all white, as was the standard on Hyperion. But I had changed a few things about, I had made a kind of mask with access to oxygen, some of the tubes that were along the corridor carried fresh air around. Over the… months, years. Might have been decades I had been down here, I managed to create a system in which I could readily have access to that sweet nectar. Any one of the rooms I went into could have been de-pressurised, and I didn't fancy suffocation as a particularly nice way to go out.

I lifted my bag onto my back, putting small bits of food into it for the day, or night, I couldn't tell. I had luckily managed to find a food store a while back, and since all the food on Hyperion was non expirable, I had a seemingly limitless store. I took out my blaster and put it in my right hand, and took out the most valuable piece of paper in the entire world. My map. I had been making it for so long now, and its range seemed to go on for miles and miles. I was constantly adding more and more pages to it, in the hope that I would find a way out of this hell.

I had memorised the parts that were nearest, I'd say I knew the nearest 5 miles of windy corridors like the back of my hand. So, the parts I brought with me today were the section of the map where I was going, and a few spare sheets that I could add to depending on how far I got. Some days I wouldn't even make it that far. I was reaching the point where I could no longer go on these trips and come back the same day. At some point I would have to find a new place to go to, and then try and get out there. But I was planning to stay here for as long as I possibly could. I wasn't ready to leave my little cupboard yet; I had grown fond of it over the time I had spent living there. It wasn't comfy, or even nice looking, but it was a place where I felt safe, and safety was a thing that I didn't feel very often.

I creaked open the door, and set off down the corridor to the right. For the first hour or so, I worked on muscle memory alone, jut putting one foot in front of the other, and turning down dimly lit corridor after dimly lit corridor. There was a certain spring in my step, because the plan for today was to walk as far in this direction as I possibly could. That would take me right past the window, where I would stop and have a break for lunch.

A while back I had been walking along in this direction, I had only just begun work on my map, and it was simply a snake of the corridors that I had chosen, and not the intricate mess that I had created now. I had caught a glimpse of light, and I knew something was off. This was before I had found the blaster, so I was absolutely terrified, but intrigued at the same time. Any light that wasn't dimly lit was intriguing, and I began to let my guard down as I got closer to the light. It was a window, looking out into the vast blackness of the outside, I had never seen the outside before. I had been raised in the close interior of Hyperion. This made me ecstatically happy, but also the most miserable I had ever been in my entire life. I was happy because it meant that I could see the outside, I could see the stars and planets that we went past as we plunged deeper and deeper into the abyss.

But it made me miserable because it was at that point that I realised just how far I was from home. Hyperion was the largest thing ever built, larger than most planets. If I was on the exterior, then I was not only extremely far away from home, but I was in Quarantine.

Quarantine was the outer areas of Hyperion, and they had been sealed off from the interior during the great eclipse. I was too young to remember the great eclipse, in fact, so were the previous 8 generations. I had never been told about what had caused it, but the leaders of Hyperion, known as the "Olympians." They were charged with ruling Hyperion, and they decided to seal off the outer areas. But it was a shoddy job, and I was told that there were ways back through, and it was by that little bit of knowledge that I kept going on these expeditions.

I had first started trying to go straight back in from the window, knowing that that would send me straight towards the interior, but encountered the seal for the first time. It wasn't much, but a corridor would simply stop, and was replaced with a shiny metal wall. It couldn't be moved, cut or even shot at.

The window wasn't much further, so I simply kept putting one foot in front of the other, and moved forward. The corridors were mind numbingly repetitive, and every single one had the same things, the lights were the same distance apart, and even the pipes were in the exact same places. The only thing I had to tell where I was going was my map, but it was impossible to label, because everywhere was the same. It was just the same, lengthy corridors splitting and combining over and over again. If I took one wrong turn, I was lost. There was no way back. I had to meticulously refer to my map over and over again, making sure I was taking the right turn at every single fork.

It was extremely rare to find a room on one of the corridors, to date I had found exactly 5 on the thousands of corridors I had walked down. My little room, the food store, the window, an empty room near to my room that I used to store food so I didn't have to go all the way to the food store every time I got hungry. The fifth room was one I was saving for this expedition, just as I was turning back last time, I saw a door, but because I was so tired, I decided to leave it for next time.

Was it possible to be bored if you never knew anything else? If you were to lock someone in a room for their entire life, and they did nothing but sleep and eat, would they be bored. When you get bored its because of lack of stimuli in your brain, but if your brain had never known these stimuli, would you be bored. I posed this question to myself many times, because right now, I was bored out of my damn mind.

Sometimes I wished that something, anything would happen. Something as small as a small noise to make me want to walk further, but as I pricked up my ears, the only thing I heard, as usual, was my own footsteps and breathing, and the deep whirring that came from every single orifice of this hell hole.

After what seemed like hours of checking the map and making a left turn and the occasional riveting right turn, and sometimes even just straight on, I made it to the window. For about a month now there had been nothing there, there was the far away lights, but nothing interesting. But today we appeared to have entered a system. I always loved it when we did this, because we just ruined everything. Because our gravitational pull was larger than most planets, we seemed to pull everything we went past, out of orbit. Hyperion was quite literally a destroyer of worlds.

There was a small planet near us that seemed to be coming straight at us. Most of them seemed to go behind us, as we pulled them away, and then they drifted off into space. But this one was so small it was coming right at us. Normally this would make me terrified, but it would either drift off like most of them, or our guns would pick it off. We used them for all the asteroids that came too close, but I had never seen them do it to a planet before, I made a mental note to come back in a few days when it would happen.

I sat down and opened up my bag for lunch, once again, it was full of the most boring meal I could possibly imagine. A grey flask with one word written along it, the same damn word that taunted me every single time I opened one of these, "liquid." Real descriptive of them, it was a bland, tasteless, drink. There were separate ones of water, and this made me stop being hungry, so I assumed it was food, although there was no definitive answer.

After that frankly, boring meal, I stood up, put my bag on, and started walking. I was only a few signs out from the room I was heading to. The only way I had to measure distance was signs, every 50 turns there was a sign that said "Quarantine area, turn back". But there was something strange about the signs, on every single one I encountered, there was a small hand painted symbol in the bottom left corner. It looked like a small circle with lines coming out of it, and a line underneath.

It was one of the very few signs I had found that I wasn't alone down here, there was the signs, the occasional piece of metal on the floor, and the blaster. The metal might seem normal at first, but I couldn't find the source of it anywhere, there was no metal pipes, they were made of a strange plastic like substance. The only thing I had seen that could be the same metal, was the seal. But there was no way of breaking it. I had found the blaster one day in a seemingly normal corridor, it was just lying there on the floor. It was the absolute jackpot; it was one of those ones that you just need to wire into some power to charge. But none of the pipes in my room carried power, and the only place I could find that did was the wires that lit the lights. So, I only charged it when I absolutely had to, and even then, I made sure that I was out. I didn't like the dark.

But I had never encountered anyone in the corridors, never even catching a glimpse of anyone, so I simply acknowledged that they must have been left here by people who lived here before the Quarantine. Or by people who were working on the seal.

As I went past each sign, I always added a little mark of my own to it, in the bottom right I drew a crude number next to it. It was my only way to stop myself getting lost. If I found a sign that didn't have a number next to it then I would keep walking until I found one that did, then I would look at my map and work off the little note that had that number on it.

I went past sign number 103, and I looked down at my map, only 1 sign left to go, and then I would finally figure out what was in this room. But by the time I made it to number 104 I was dragging my legs behind me. I realised this would have to be a 2 click expedition. Every 24 hours, or at least I think so, the ship would make a light clicking noise, and I would have to sleep here, and go back the next day.

But I would make sure that I made it to the room before I slept, it wasn't every day that I found something interesting, and who knows, it might even be a way out. With only a few corridors to go, I got so tired that I had to sit down and have a rest, this was the furthest I had gone in a single day. The last time I reached here had taken me 2 clicks. I had a quick drink and a quick sip of "liquid", before getting up and walking to the door.

It was larger than the others, around twice the size, so it would be heavy. But as I started to pull at it, it wouldn't budge, after pulling and pulling, I decided that I was so tired I frankly didn't care, so I shot it with my blaster. I put my mask on so I could breathe even If it had no oxygen inside.

I could pull it open after that, and as it creaked on its worn-out hinges, it revealed a dark room behind. I had never found a dark room before; the other ones were already lit when I opened the door. But this one had nothing on inside. It was impossible to figure out how large it was, it could be as small as my little room, or as large as the food store, or even bigger.

I had never seen darkness, not like this, I had seen corridors with a few broken lights, but they were small, and I avoided them. Darkness was the thing that terrified me most in the world, it was like a blindfold, cast over your eyes. You could be seen, and controlled, but you could not see or do anything about it.

I felt like one of those heroes on the shows I watched as a kid, but instead of entering it with bravery and dashing looks, I was terrified, and wearing a mask that covered my face. I took it off once I confirmed it had a steady supply of oxygen. I was never good looking like the heroes on TV, and especially now, I must have looked like an absolute vagabond. I hadn't cut my hair in god knows how long. I had the occasional wash with the water I found in the food store, and there was even a bar of soap in there. But my long brown hair seemed to curl and become a thing that I had absolutely no control over. I had tried to cut it before, but the only thing I ended up cutting was myself.

I had attached a small light to the top of my blaster, so as I raised it up, I had a dimly lit view of the room, but even then, I could barely see anything, the room wasn't that large, but it was several times larger than my room. But not quite as big as the food store. But there were a few interesting things in the room. I found a small table on it with stacks of paper on it, they appeared to be diagrams, maps of the surrounding areas, they weren't as expansive as my map, but they were pretty good. But it was the diagrams that were far superior to anything I had made, they were diagrams of spaceships, and various weapons that I didn't recognise.

I reached over to a mug that was sitting on the side of the table, next to the drawings. It had been left there, and left a small brown stain on the paper. I picked it up, and looked at the drawing underneath. I wrapped my fingers around the cup to keep warm, the diagram was of a train, detailing the wires and boxes needed to fix one.

I walked away from the desk and looked at the drawing, wondering who made it, and how old it was. I pushed that out of my mind and took a sip at the cup, it was nice and warmed my insides. I hadn't had a hot drink in the long while.

The penny dropped, shattering the illusion I had found myself in. It was still hot, there was someone else here. I snapped my blaster up into firing position instinctively, with the small light taped to the top illuminating small parts of the room in turn.

I saw a bed, un kept and dirty, another table, with small scraps of food littered around the centre. But no human, not anywhere. My heartrate was through the roof and the adrenaline was pumping through my veins.

I glanced at the door, seeing the bright rectangle of light, and back the room. The room, to the door, back and forth as I built up the courage to run. I readied my feet and dashed, and a cold hard piece of metal was thrust into the back of my head.

"Friend or foe" said a deep voice, it rumbled around the room and seemed to reverberate along the gun he had pressed into my skull. "Friend" I stuttered back, "Please don't shoot, I'm just trying to find a way out."

"Well I could say the same thing, how long have you been down here." He said, the barrel pressing harder into my head. "I don't know" I was on the verge of tears, I had spent years down here, and I was going to die right here. "years I think, I really don't know, just please don't kill me."

He pulled the barrel from my head and flicked a switch next to him, the lights flickered for about 5 seconds before staying on. I slowly turned around and saw a tall man standing in front of me, because I had spent so long down here, I had no idea whether I was tall or short compared to other people. But it appeared I had taken the short end of the stick, and I was a dwarf compared to him.

He had a short, well kept beard and hair, and he seemed to be very strong. But he had a certain look in his eyes that showed a strong amount of wisdom, that was increased when he put a pair of small circular glasses on. He looked to be about 40 to 45, but it was hard to tell from just looking at him. I felt a bit strange, as his hair was so well kept and trimmed, but mine looked like a literal bush, and especially after a long day of walking, I must have looked like some kind of small bear.

"What's your name boy" he grumbled.

"Cass, just Cass."

"Well Cass, I'm Kieron, but you can call me K"

"How long have you been down here? And what were those diagrams of? And are you the person that's been tailing me?" I managed to blurt out.

"Hold on there, I'll answer them one at a time. You get to ask one, and then I get to ask one. What one does you want me to do first?" He answered

"How long have you been down here" I chose.

"Round about 20 years now, what about you, where did you find that gun there?" He asked,

"I just found it on the floor one day while making my maps."

"You make maps?" he said "I make them too, and gestured to the table.

He motioned for me to sit down, and I did so, it was a small bench made of concrete, he remined standing, but leant up against the chair by the desk.

"Yeah, I make them, are you the person that's been tailing me?" I asked.

"Well I haven't been tailing you, but you may know me as the guy who writes the symbols on the signs, and I'm guessing that you're the guy who writes the numbers?"

"That would be me. I use them to figure out where I am if I get lost." I said

"I'm guessing you haven't had any luck at finding a way out?"

"None, and I've mapped the nearest 500 signs."

"What's that?"

"I use it as a measure of distance, the signs are the same distance apart."

"Huh, well although you haven't had any luck, I believe that I've recently made a breakthrough."

"Did you find a way out!"

"Not yet, but I believe I might have. There's a strange tunnel around 20, what did you call them, signs away."

"What do you mean tunnel, this is all tunnels."

"But this one has rails, and with your help I can get the contraption on it to move."

"Wait what. You found a train. I thought those all died years ago!"

"It is dead, but I've been working on getting power from the lights to power it, but I need an extra pair of hands."

"I can help, I'll do anything to get out of here. But I need to get my stuff first."

"Go ahead, how long will you be?"

"If I go fast, I can be back here tomorrow morning."

"Well go fast then, I'll see you then, back here."

He gave me a mock two fingered salute and smiled, I turned and ran out the door, I was getting out of here.

I darted down the corridors with a new energy I hadn't had in a while, I occasionally checked my map, but I just kept running. I stopped to have water, and after a while I was gasping for breath. I kept walking, but slowly, I wasn't the most fit person.

I eventually kept up a good pace, I was walking faster than normal, but I didn't want to waste my energy like I did before. I kept running over the same thing over and over again as I put foot in front of foot. I was getting out.

When I made it back, I packed my bag and considered going out straight away, but it had been a long day and I was exhausted. I would wake up early and go then. I settled into my hammock and looked around my tiny little room, I had spent so many nights in here, and this would be the last one.

I slept well, and woke feeling refreshed, albeit drowsy as usual. I got dressed slowly, put my bag on, and stepped out the door. I had brought everything with me, even the hammock, and now the room was completely empty. I didn't expect to want to stay, but I collapsed to the floor and began to cry. I leant up against the door frame and cried my eyes out.

I looked around the little room, the nook where I had hung my hammock, the wall which I pinned my map to, there wasn't much there, but it was that little room that I loved. I had spent so many years here, so many nights in that little hammock, so many days going out that door. I had formed a close bond with that room, it had kept me safe, and that was something I would remember forever.

I managed to stifle the tears stand up and begin to walk down the corridor.

I turned back over my shoulder and managed to choke out the words, "goodbye, old friend" I turned around and started walking, I would never sleep in there again, I would never take a piece of my map off and use it to map out the day, I would never see it again…

But I had to keep looking forward, although I would miss my little room, I was getting out of here, I would leave this place forever. I had worked for years toward that very goal, and today was the day where I would achieve that goal, but I felt a strange pang of sadness in my heart. No more maps, no more walking, no more finding new rooms.

I hated this place, and every single day I left that door I desperately hoped that I would find a way out, and not have to spend another night there. But I had to push that out of my mind, and think about getting out instead. I made a mental note to ask K to cut my hair, because his was so well kept. But I couldn't push one thought out of my mind, the train. Where was it? How did he find one? How did it work? I logged all these questions into the back of my mind and focused on walking. I didn't even need my map; the whole thing was placed in the front pocket of my bag. It had gotten rather extensive over the years, and was taking up a large section of my bag.

The walk back to Ks place was long, but I kept talking to myself on the way over, so I wasn't that bored, I always talked to myself when I went walking, it was my only defence against the insanity that plagued so many when they were left alone for long periods of time.

I felt it occasionally crawling at the edge of my vision, I always managed to avoid it, but I had bad patches. There were times where I would sit in the corner of my room for days at a time and just break.

So, I kept talking, about anything really, it was nonsense most of the time, just muttering about things that I saw, or what I remembered from before. It wasn't very riveting conversation, but it kept me sane, so I kept doing it.

The door was closed again, I pulled it open and it was dark. I managed to fumble my way over to the light switch where I think K had turned on the lights. I found it and a light click resonated throughout the room. I turned around and saw K, hanging from a rope in the ceiling.

I couldn't see much of his body, but I could see that his neatly kept beard was dyed completely red, and blood seemed to be coming from his torso, and was still spilling out. I tried taking his pulse and desperately hoped that I would hear that tell-tale thud, but there was nothing. He was gone.

His clothes were drenched in blood, there was more there than I would ever think to be in a human. I wandered around the room a bit, looking for anything that I could use on my ongoing journey. I found some clothes in his wardrobe, and I put them on. It was the same white trousers and jacket, but they were clean, and crisp. So much unlike the ones that I was wearing now. I had to do something with the body.

It was done recently, and for him to have died that quickly, what they did must have been pretty bad. I didn't try to get a look at it, I got him down and put a blanket over him and tried to think. I walked around the small room, there wasn't much in it, a desk, a bookcase and a bed, and of course the body lying in the middle of the room.

I thought about what I would want someone to do with my body once I was dead, I certainly wouldn't want to be left on a cold concrete floor. I guess I could leave him there, but then got an idea, the window wasn't too far away, and it was the very least I could do for him.

I spotted a kind of trolley in the corner of the room and lifted the body onto it, I wheeled it out of the room and along the corridors, it wasn't far.

When I got there, I took his body off, and placed it leaning up against the door that went into the room. The planet had drifted off course by now, but we were presented with a dazzling view of that system. Beautiful orbs floating in a pristine black sky, all going around and round a sun, that would be where I would want to die.

I closed his eyes, and walked out, I teared up again, I seemed to be doing a lot of crying recently. I was on a timer now; I didn't want to spend one second more than I had to in here.

I noticed a flash of red glint in my eye, and saw something on his desk, there was a piece of paper out with a short paragraph written on it in scraggly black ink.

"Its dangerous out there, the forests filled most of it when they came. It appears that the only safe place is Sparta, but it's a long way from here, with a difficult journey. But I feel that if I make it there, I could be finally at peace.

K was lying near the desk holding a pen, and written under the paragraph was a string of numbers that read "875:62.67/81" I didn't know what it meant, but for him to have written it in his dying moments, it must have been crucial.

There were a few maps, I glazed over them and found the one that mentioned the train he mentioned, it was extremely close to hear, only about 5 corridors over. If he had been here for as long as he said he had, how had he only just found it recently?

I guess I would never know, all those memories of his time down here, long or short, were lost forever. Just like mine, unless I got out of here. I quickly grabbed a few of the papers, stuffed them into my bag and left. I grabbed all the ones that mentioned the train, or anything that I might find useful.

Whatever killed K must have still been nearby, so I crept out holding my blaster into the firing position and quickly made my way over to where the train was on the maps K had drawn.

It was certainly a train station, tracks leading off into a tunnel that seemed to go on forever. But there was no train, I checked the map again, and all the diagrams of the train that K had drawn. But there was no clue there as to where it was.

I jumped down onto the tracks and started walking. There was only one direction to go, the station was completely empty except for a small area next to the tracks. The rest was just blank concrete, and those same damn pipes.

It was dimly lit in the tunnel, as always, but the lights were positioned just far away enough from each other that there was a patch of darkness in between them of around 5 metres or so. I counted about 20 lights until I couldn't see further, it was the train.

It was blocking out the lights in front of it, because it was so large it filled the entire tunnel, and from behind it just looked like a pitch-black hole. But upon closer inspection you found a single cabin train. It must have been left behind when the workers left from sealing up the remainder of the exterior.

I clambered in from the back, unsealing the door with a swish of air coming out. It was incredibly dusty inside, but when I made it up to the control panel, it flickered into life. I don't know why, I guess K must have fixed it finally when I was going back to get my stuff. It was sad that he would never get to use it, he would spend the rest of time in that room, and I couldn't do anything about it.

I crossed my fingers and muttered "please, please, please" over and over again as I reached for the ignition. My fingers wrapped around the heavy lever and I slowly pushed it forward, and the train eased into life. It rolled slowly at first, but as I pushed it further it began to pick up speed, going faster and faster to take me… home.

I lay down on a bench made for the workers and let the train continue rumbling along the track. I began to cry, but instead of tears of sadness, they were tears of pure joy. I was getting out, after god knows how many years, I had spent in the exterior I was finally going back. All those years I had spent walking, when my way out was just one days walk away.

The train kept going and going, and I fell asleep on the cold hard bench, my arm over my eyes and drifted off. It would be at this time the heroes in the stories I read would dream about escape, and have visions of the future. But I dreamt about K, and his body, still lying there on the floor, never to be rescued.

I woke up after a while, it could have been hours or just a few minutes, but I still had a long way to go back to the interior. It would be around 2 days from now, and this train was going incredibly fast.

The 2 days seemed to drift past like a dream, either lying down, or sitting in the chair by the control panel, trying to figure out how the train was working. It looked like a big rectangle, like a normal train carriage, but there was a control panel there, and it seemed to require no skill whatsoever to pilot.

It was strange, something to me just didn't add up, I'd been wandering around those corridors for years, and then in one day I find someone else, and a working train that carries me out of here. It was too perfect, but I wasn't going to complain, I was getting out, what more could I ask for.

The train started to rumble to a stop when I was sitting right at the back of the train, and as it slowly drifted into another station, it looked exactly the same as the other one, completely blank except for a door that was closed.

My stomach was so full of butterflies that I wouldn't be surprised if they came right out of my mouth. I felt sick with excitement, I opened the door at the back again, because the ones on the side wouldn't open, and pulled myself up onto the platform.

I could barely stand I was so nervous, yet so excited and joyful. I reached for the door and twisted the handle, with every muscle I used having an incredible importance. I pushed on the door and it creaked open, dragging along the floor on its bottom hinge. It completely fell over when I pushed it all the way.

It was bright, far brighter than any of the corridors from back at the exterior, but what I saw was the complete opposite of what I had expected. I had expected a pristine white paradise of open halls and bustling with people, plenty with food and wealth. But I was greeted with a different scene.

It was indeed a large chamber, but it was not full of people, and it was not white, it was green. Vines and plants grew out of every crevasse of this huge room. I took a few steps in and called out, to no reply.

I waded through the grass, and It opened up further, revealing itself to be larger than any room I had ever been in. It seemed to open up into the sky, and it went up so high that I could barely make out the ceiling. It went so far that I couldn't see the other end.

I was at one end of a dense forest, in a small clearing with a door in the end. It seemed to go on forever, and my heart both sank and rose at the same time. It was not what I had been expecting, but then again, it was better than what I had before.

I hitched my bag over my shoulder and I walked into the forest, it seemed strange hearing the same familiar thud of my feet hitting the solid ground, yet being surrounded by something I had never seen, or at least never remembered seeing.

I took interest in every single one of them, from the smallest bush and blade of grass to the mighty trees that seemed to go all the way up into the ceiling. It was all wonderful, and I preferred it immensely to those same old corridors that I had spent so many years in.

I made my way over to the other end of the room, hearing the constant rustling of leaves, and creaking of the floor beneath me, it was slightly different than before, that instead of being solid concrete, it was panelled metal, painted a bright white, with small pipes going over it, and the occasional large one that I had to step over. It was like this on every panel, but each one was different, a different size, shape, with different wires and pipes. Some of them were covered in them, but there were some with no wires at all.

I found 2 doors in the corner, each leading into completely different rooms, one was forested as well, but seemed to be smaller, and the other was empty, save for the strange objects littered around. Ranging from a massive cube, to a simple blaster.

There were numbers over the doors, and they looked similar to the one that K had written on the piece of paper, I pulled it out and compared it to the ones above the doors. One read, "842:62.67/81" and the other read "840:62.67/81" The one that started with 842 was closer to the 875 on my number, so I went in.

It was the smaller, forested room, but I went and grabbed the blaster I saw on the floor of the other room and put it in my bag, just in case. The large cube seemed to have no purpose, and it seemed to stay the same no matter where I touched or tried to push it, weird.

Although the room was smaller, the forest inside was far denser than in the previous one, and I found myself shoving through the bushes and plants as if it was a solid wall of green.

I also saw a plant that hung luminous lights out of it, almost as if it was presenting fruit almost like a tree. But there was something different, the tree started at a base that was short and fat, then it opened up into a sort of flower, with many of these oval shaped glowing objects being thrust out into the night. The plant was also larger than most of the other forest floor plants, towering at over 10 metres. I decided to investigate further, I waited, poised on a branch for a short while, checking for any danger before slowly making my way towards it.

The ground was covered in knee length grass, and as it scraped against me, I pulled out my blaster and made my way towards the tree. There were hundreds of other trees in the nearby area, yet none had grown near this tree. The tree was in the centre of a clearing in the ground, yet the trees had still grown overhead, yet not within 10 metres of the tree. There was also no fruit being hung above the tree, and only the trees 50 metres above it presented it with any obstacle into the ceiling. As I kept my eyes fixated on the tree, assuming a defensive stance, blaster drawn, my mind screamed for me to run, that there was something wrong here, something sinister.

I made my way further and further into the clearing, occasionally pausing to look around him for any danger, and as I waded through the grass towards the pulsating orbs, I began to feel my mind alter. I heard whispers, "come closer" or "reach for the fruit". My mind willingly obeyed and my legs kept plodding forward towards the tree.

My mind became more and more warped, with everything around me beginning to shift in colour and size, as if they were pulsating in the light. But one thing remained constant, the tree, and as I felt my mind completely give up, there was nothing I could do but keep up the melodious movement forwards, towards the fruit.

Yet I kept moving forward, as if something was commanding my body to do so. I slowly turned my head to the right, I had become one with the plant now, and the plant sensed something. Suddenly, a large creature burst out into the clearing, and took a few slow steps into the long grass before becoming transfixed on the plant like me.

It was massive, far larger than me, and covered in hair all over its body. I would normally be amazed, it was the first animal I had seen, but the plant had seen it before.

My focus returned to the plant and the whispers continued, it was if I was no longer himself, I had been thrown out of my own body and all I could do was watch as I plodded towards the plant. I turned once more to see the creature lumbering towards the plant as well, yet it moved faster than me, and made it there first.

It took a moment as it licked its lips, and then reached out for the fruit lowest to the ground, the whispers became louder and louder "Yes, take the fruit, sustain yourself." But whilst the plants attention was focused on the creature, its focus on me decreased, and as I gained control for a single second, it was enough to turn and run. The beast however was not so lucky.

Vines slowly came out of the main body of the plant, and like charmed snakes, and made their way towards the beast, completely enticed now by the plant, it made no objection. The beast was slowly lowered into the air, its eyes still milky white and fixated on the plant. It finally realised what was happening after it was too late.

I turned away at the last second, but its bellowing let me know exactly what was happening. It was while before the cries died down, and I gulped in my throat and knew that I had to keep moving. This was not the paradise I had initially thought.

I walked around the edge of the clearing, making sure not to look at those lights again as I worked my way round the circular clearing. The room was not that big, and I made it quickly to the other side.

I once again took the room with the number closest to mine, and walked through it. Most of the rooms I went through were the same, just small forested rooms, and I luckily didn't find that horrible plant again.

The rooms confused me beyond belief, there was absolutely no pattern, one might be completely empty, and another might be completely filled with small balls. This was not how I expected the interior to be at all, I had not expected danger and confusion, I had expected salvation.

There were a few that were more interesting, there was one that was just plain white. With no panels at all, just plain white floors and ceilings. The one after that was quite fitting, as it was entirely black. I could see the light of the door at the other end, but It was weird. Because although it wasn't actually that dark, there were still ceiling lights, it felt as if I was in a dark void, and was waiting to fall through the floor.

There it was, room "875:62.67/81"

I ran as fast as I possible could towards the buildings, and burst in between them and cried out. No one replied. The buildings were small, and made out of the wood they had gotten nearby trees, it was a small community, with only around 50 houses or so.

I was about to cry out again when someone came out of the building nearest me. I smiled a weak smile and collapsed to the floor; I had made it.

No more corridors, no more walking, no more maps. I had done it.

I forgot what had happened to K.

I forgot what had happened to me in all those years in those corridors.

I did not think about the person running towards me.

I did not think about my future.

I lay there in the grass and thought about the window, with K sitting there, propped up against the door, watching the planets go past.

I wondered what was there now, I bet it was stars, great balls of fire that lit up the sky.

I thought of the stars.

I thought of the stars…


End file.
